DID YOU KNOW? YOU CAN NOW READ THREE TO SIX CHAPTERS AHEAD. CHECK MY PROFILE FOR THE LINK.
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"Well, assuming she succeeds, that is," Guy added, a faint, razor-sharp smile touching his lips, an expression that felt wildly out of place given the apocalyptic weight of his words.
"Dude, don't just blurt out something that insane and then brush it off like it's nothing!" Rimuru snapped, glaring up at the crimson-haired Demon Lord.
Guy maintained his subtle grin as he turned his gaze down to the slime. "So bold now. If I am being entirely honest, while I find you mildly interesting, I fail to see the true appeal. Just what exactly do those two see in a creature like you?"
Rimuru blinked, completely thrown off guard by the sudden shift in conversation. "Where the hell did that question come from?!"
"Guy." Kaede stepped forward, her eyes locked firmly on the dark duplicate, or rather, the future incarnation of herself hovering in the absolute void. "You called her my future self. What do you mean by that? How can you possibly know? I would never... I would never turn out like that."
Guy folded his arms, his crimson eyes gleaming with a mixture of amusement and calculated detachment. "A fascinating visitor graced my territory not too long ago, another time traveler. One who claimed to be extraordinarily close to our little friend Rimuru here. She came specifically to warn me about your future self, begging for my assistance in hunting her down and putting an end to her."
Kaede's breath hitched slightly, her hands clenching into tight fists at her sides. "And what was she so eager to stop my future self from doing?"
Guy's grin widened, though his eyes remained utterly cold. "To prevent the total annihilation of the world, of course. A rather grand claim, wouldn't you say? I must admit, the prospect of someone attempting to bring about the end of everything intrigues me dearly... though I harbored my fair share of doubts regarding her tale."
"How?" Kaede pressed, stepping closer, her voice laced with intense focus. "How could she possibly destroy the entire world?"
Guy shrugged loosely, tilting his head. "Ah, well, she neglected to offer that particular piece of information. A shame, really."
A heavy silence settled over the ruined landscape.
Kaede stared at him, her eyes narrowing as a cold realization took root in her mind. 'He's lying.' He knew far more than he was letting on, choosing to withhold the crucial details for his own amusement or hidden agenda.
Beside her, Rimuru squinted at the Lord of Darkness, exchanging a brief, knowing look with Luminous. Neither of them bought Guy's nonchalant act for a single second either. The red-haired Demon Lord was playing his cards entirely too close to his chest.
Milim, however, couldn't care less about time travelers, vague warnings, or political deceit.
"I don't care about any of that!" Milim declared, her loud voice shattering the tension like glass.
She took a heavy step forward, and the suppressed atmosphere around her violently cracked. A blinding pillar of dark crimson magicules erupted from her body, completely defying the suppressive, power-draining effects of the [Anti-Skill] field enveloping the area.
Her form shifted rapidly as she entered her battle mode: sleek, pitch-black dragonoid armor coalesced around her limbs and torso, a single dark horn spired upward from her forehead, and in her grip materialized her signature weapon, Asura, a deadly, heavy-bladed glaive with a shortened hilt, resembling a massive, single-edged sword.
Rimuru's jaw practically hit the ground as he stumbled back from the sudden, overwhelming pressure. "W-Wait a minute! How is she generating that much power?! Isn't Anti-Skill supposed to nullify magicule flow and skill activation?!"
"For a second, I thought she was using that skill again," Guy laughed, the sound dry and entirely unbothered by the impending spatial collapse.
"You're not really being any help right now, you know?" Rimuru snapped at him again, glaring at the red-haired Demon Lord. "In fact, you're pretty much completely useless here."
"Relax, would you?" Guy brushed him off with a loose wave of his hand, his crimson eyes watching Milim shoot forward toward the future Kaede at speeds well beyond the threshold of light. "[Anti-Skill] is indeed a very impressive technique to contend with. But it is by no means entirely impossible to bypass. In fact, if you take a closer look, you'll see I am no longer affected by it in the slightest."
Indeed, as Rimuru, Kaede, and Luminous focused their perception on Guy, they noticed his magicules had already surged back to their overwhelming baseline. All of his passive defensive barriers had returned to their absolute prime state, completely ignoring the nullification field.
Already knowing the exact question forming in their minds, Guy grinned devilishly. "If you like, I can share the method with you. Of course, doing so means you'll each owe me a favor or two down the line."
"Whatever! Just do it!" Rimuru conceded, throwing his hands up in defeat.
"Get it over with," Luminous added through gritted teeth, her pride deeply wounded by her current powerlessness under the suffocating weight of [Anti-Skill].
Guy chuckled again as he raised a finger, transmitting the raw conceptual data directly into their minds via high-speed thought communication.
The information arrived as pure, unrefined logic. To Rimuru, it looked suspiciously like complex, dense lines of back-end computer code, meaning he personally understood absolutely none of it.
Fortunately, he didn't need to understand it himself. He had a partner who handled those exact headaches for a living.
‹Report. Analyzing transmitted data string...› came Raphael's calm, immediate voice. ‹Analysis complete. Integrating new variable to bypass external nullification.›
Instantly, the crushing physical pressure on Rimuru vanished into thin air. His magicule circulation flared back to its full, staggering heights, and he actually felt a fraction stronger than he had before entering the field.
Beside him, Kaede underwent the exact same transformation. Artificia instantly parsed through the transmitted information, adapting to bypass the suppression and turning the concept to her immediate benefit.
Luminous was only a second behind the two of them. A torrent of brilliant holy magic erupted from her body in golden waves, and her usual composure instantly returned to her face.
"We still can't break out of the Demon Realm just yet, but at least we're not sitting ducks anymore," Rimuru smiled, drawing his katana and giving it an expert, accustomed spin.
Ahead of them, the fabric of reality shattered once more as Milim's onslaught collided with the future Kaede.
Or rather, Milim was violently and repeatedly slamming her heavy, single-edged glaive against the dark, flower-like perimeter of the shield, while the future Kaede simply stood suspended in the air, completely motionless and entirely unmoved.
"Now that our strength has returned, this shouldn't take long," Luminous declared, her crimson eyes gleaming with cold confidence. "With five Demon Lords standing together, the outcome is a foregone conclusion."
As if to solidify her words, a resounding, universe-shattering crack echoed across the dimension, and the future Kaede was suddenly sent flying backward like a discarded ragdoll.
"She... she actually got through?!" Kaede gasped, her jaw dropping in utter bewilderment at the sight. "But how?!"
Rimuru had to mentally agree with her confusion. "Don't tell me Milim just smashed straight through that barrier with pure brute force?! I know I called her cheating before, but seriously, how does someone just punch through an infinite stack of space?!"
And just to ruin Rimuru's day even further, the future Kaede suddenly stabilized her flying trajectory mid-air. As Milim charged recklessly after her retreating form, the imposter flipped in space, and the dark, flower-shaped shield around her arm began to rapidly twist and reconfigure, shifting until it morphed into a heavy, metallic cylinder.
"A cannon!" Rimuru instantly recognized the sleek, sci-fi-looking weapon, a design he had seen countless times in futuristic mangas and animes.
"Milim, get out of the way!" Kaede roared, her voice laced with panic.
She was too late.
"[COUNTER]!" the future Kaede bellowed, her voice layered with overlapping distortion.
The cannon arm flashed a blinding, apocalyptic crimson before unleashing a colossal beam of energy, a crimson so impossibly intense that it inverted the darkness of the realm, turning the surrounding world stark white.
Milim was hit dead-on by the full force of the discharge. The sheer pressure dragged her straight through the sky, triggering a chain reaction of unending, cataclysmic explosions that ripped the atmosphere to shreds.
When the blinding glare eventually subsided, a battered figure plummeted from the scorched clouds, crashing heavily into the ground right beside the gathered group.
Milim coughed, spitting out a small puff of smoke as she shakily pushed herself back onto her feet. Her dragonoid armor was scuffed and her pigtails were messily frayed.
She looked up at the group, giving a weak, sheepish grin. "So, uh... what's the plan, guys?"
"Maybe next time don't rush in like a reckless idiot!" Rimuru snapped, bonking her lightly on top of her head in exasperation.